Hawaiians say that “Maui no ka oi,” or that “Maui is the best.” And we agree.

KA’ANAPALI, MAUI, HAWAII—It was early morning, with a soft light falling on the beach below my room at the Ka’anapali Beach Hotel in West Maui. I was looking down at awalkway that runs behind one of this island’s longest and best beaches when I spotted a boy of about eight years old, with fiery red hair and a kelly green t-shirt, tailing behind a girl in a white dress about two years younger. They had something in their hands, but it wasn’t until I saw them dash up to a woman and yell, “Mommy” that I could see what they were carrying.

Each had plucked a creamy yellow and white plumeria blossom from the impossibly green lawn at the hotel, and they presented them to their mother with a smile. She reached down and tucked a blossom behind an ear of both kids and they walked away.

It might happen in Jamaica or on the beach of Brazil, anyplace where everyday cares are replaced by a dose of holiday happiness. But to me it offers up the perfect embodiment of Hawaiian aloha, a word that most non-Hawaiians would take to mean simply hello or goodbye but which really embodies the spirit of this gregarious nation of people, who live out each day with scenes of palm trees and jet blue skies and tropical breezes tasting of tangy salt air, fragrant flowers and warm, red earth.

I’m lucky enough to have come here many times, thanks to parents that instilled a love of this place deep in my soul. This trip I decide to make my first round-the-island tour, including the popular drive to Hana and also the north shore trip past the tiny, isolated village of Kahakuloa, which defines the words “time stood still.”

My first full day on the island I wake up early in the town of Paia, a hippie-style surf town down the coast from the capital of Wailuku. It was just after sunrise in a deserted, waterfront park and I have my new camera with me when a kid with scraggly, straggly hair and a purple bandana, looking for all the world like he just woke up on the beach after a rough night, walked up to me.

“Hey man.”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, you shoulda been here 15 minutes ago. There was a wicked rainbow.”

He turns and walks away, and I feel like an idiot for holding tight to my camera strings.

Paia marches to its own bongo beat. It’s a haven for hippies, sure, but also just down the road from cowboy country. You can find an eight-year-old in chaps and a western hat sidling into a Chevy Tahoe caked with mud, just as an aging woman with long grey hair and multiple tattoos pulls up on a motorcycle and heads into Anthony’s Coffee Shop, where they sell strong, Hawaiian “local grinds” and homemade coconut-pineapple muffins the size of a softball.

“Paia still has an old school feel,” said native Val Akana at Anthony’s. “You get a real variety but there are no “uppities” here. Everybody’s even.”

One morning as I went for a walk past the Dharma Center, a study site for Tibetan Buddhists, I passed storefront posters for reggae concerts, salsa dancing and a coming visit by an Ayuma holistic yoga preacher. As I looked up, I saw a small, suntanned man all bent over and carrying a white cross over his head, marching up the hill towards the pineapple and sugar cane fields and the cowboy town of Makawao, where there are feed stores and cowboy shops selling Texas-sized belt buckles. Sotheby’s has a real estate shop just down the road from Komoda’s bakery and store, where they sell Portuguese donuts called malasadas, either plain or filled with gooey, guava jam.

Almost everyone who comes at one time or another will try the drive to Hana, usually beginning around Paia and working one’s way southeast along one of the most famous coastal drives in the world. The road is perfectly paved, unlike 30 years ago, but it still has something like 600 curves and 54 bridges, many of them one way. The route winds through giant wiliwili trees (African tulips) with enormous, deep-orange blossoms and towering pandanus – often dripping with rain on this, the windward side of the island. Fruit stands line the road at regular intervals, sometimes on the honour system and sometimes with a youngster or an older person hawking banana bread or fresh guavas – they fall off the trees here in droves – or firm, white coconut.

The road offers stunning views of deep valleys misted with waterfalls, and a ragged, rugged coastline dotted with jet-black lava and slender, towering palm trees that sway above the pounding white foam from the waves.

I slowed to take a picture at a spot near Hana called Coconut Glen’s, and the 20-somethings behind the counter urged me to try some homemade ice cream. Joei Tyra, a refugee from the dry, arid plains of Oklahoma, makes a coconut, chipotle and chocolate ice cream and says I’m to ring a small, metal gong on the counter if I think it’s the best I’ve ever had. Five minutes later I’m banging the gong like a madman.

Tyra explains she’s into perma-culture farming and that she’s a wwoofer, which means worldwide opportunities on organic farms. It’s a system or lifestyle in which workers come and go in exchange for lodging and food, or something like that.

Further down is a ramshackle string of buildings called the Nihiku marketplace, just up the road from George Harrison’s old Hana place. There’s a small jewelry/craft shop and beat-up barbeque places with surfboard-shaped signposts and eclectic folks hanging about. One guy playing guitar in front of a maroon motor home with a matching awning won’t offer any name other than Max, muttering something about the American Internal Revenue Service and back taxes. The other fellow, an older chap with white hair and a yellow shirt, introduces himself as Hans Mayne. His partner, Lori Lee, is inside the motor home cooking on a stove. They have a story. Of course.

As Hans plays guitar with Max the tax problem guy, Lori Lee explains she’s a cook from Austin, Texas and was in Hawaii on holiday some 16 years ago when she locked her keys in her car at the beach. Hans came to her rescue. He was a chef at a fancy hotel on Maui, born in India of British parents and trained in Switzerland and Sweden.

“So, here we are, I’m from Texas, he’s from India, and we’re together operating a restaurant in the rainforest.”

I spend the night at my favourite hotel in the world, the luscious but not over the top Hotel Hana-Maui, with glorious, wide-open grounds overlooking the pounding surf and a restaurant deck with views of insanely bright bougainvillea and, down the hill, the blue waters of Hana Bay. With memories of the purple bandana kid on the beach still giving me a case of the guilts, the next day I pick up a couple scraggly young hitchhikers. Sam and Jake are headed to the “upcountry” near Ulapalakua, where they’re going to clear some land owned by a woman they met on a recent Sunday night “drum circle” on little Makena beach, a beautiful crescent of sand that’s also a popular if not quite legal nude beach.

We stop at the wildly entertaining Kaupo Gap store and talk with the owner, Linda. Her shop is part grocery store and part museum, with old cameras dating from 50 years ago mounted next to old coffee cans and other oddities.

I drop them off and taste some of the surprisingly good red wine at the Ulapalakua winery high up the side of Haleakala, the 10,000-foot, dormant volcano that dominates east Maui. It’s a popular destination for folks to catch the sunrise, as well as the starting point for serious crater hikes and downhill-all-the-way bike rides.

I spend the night at the remarkable Grand Wailea Hotel, situated on a perfect crescent of golden sand and offering a lip-smackingly attractive series of swimming pools, complete with waterslides, a rope swing where kids will fly out over the pool and do a somersault into the water and, for adults, a swim-up bar.

From there it’s on to one of the great towns of America, the old Hawaiian village of Lahaina, where whalers rocked and rolled before the missionaries came and put a stop to the shenanigans. It’s got a free and funky, Key West kinda feel, dominated by an ancient banyan tree that’s got dozens of trunks and spreads across an entire square block. Next door is the low-slung, picturesque Pioneer Inn, which was built by a member of the RCMP who came to Hawaii a hundred years or so ago in pursuit of a criminal and fell in love. Touristy, sure, but fun as hell.

Just up the road is the low-key, traditional hotel that’s been called the most Hawaiian property in the state, the Ka’anapali Beach Hotel. In addition to a prime spot on the beach, just steps from the outdoor shops of the plush Whalers Village centre, the KBH offers hula and music shows for free every night to anyone who drops in. They also welcome all guests with a special Hawaiian chant, followed by a free breakfast and a Hawaiian concert by hotel workers.

They offer ukulele lessons (try to get Sam Ako to help you out), as well as lei-making classes and lots of other activities. And they can arrange a zipline ride in the West Maui mountains overlooking the coast, as well as snorkeling or other activities.

Kalani Nakoa, director of sales and marketing, shows a visitor a large outrigger canoe that’s parked on the shady lawn between the hotel and the beach.

“We felled the main tree for the canoe on Nov. 9, 2009. It was launched March 9 the next year, and it was built almost entirely by hotel workers.”

All workers at the hotel are schooled in Hawaiian culture. The canoe is just the most obvious manifestation of that commitment.

There are a million characters on a tropical island like Maui. Mel Witt, however, is another step up on the seismograph. He used to play for the Boston Patriots in the NFL and tells me he was the first black man to be a stockbroker in Massachusetts and also accompanied Joe Kennedy Jr. to a Muhammad Ali speech at Harvard University. He chucked it all one day and took up a beach life, and now dispenses water, banana bread, hand-made jewelry and whatever else he can sell at a humble roadside stand called “Witt’s End.” It sits high on a bluff overlooking the pounding surf of north Maui, a good four or five miles past the glitz of Kapalua, home to top PGA Tour golfers every January, plus million dollar condos and glittering beaches such as Kapalua and Napili.

Witt has a favourite poem, where he calls himself The Turtle and “Hawaii’s own superhero,” and he’ll gladly recite it and give a hug to any young ladies that come by in their convertibles. My 15 minutes with him was the highlight of my final day on the island.

I think back to the rainbow kid in Paia and a morning tour in an outrigger canoe with traditional canoeist Kimokeo Kapahulehua from the Kihei Beach Club and to an enormous waterfall 10 meters from the road near Hana and fresh seafood all over and a great lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise in Lahaina on a brilliant, sunshiny day by the water and the wild surf that rollicked west Maui the last day I was there. I laugh when I think about a chat I had with artist Pat Masumoto in the increasingly interesting town of Wailuku, who painted an abstract that a local girl insists is a giant, beige bum. I think back to a night at Napili Beach, my favourite spot on earth, listening to the surf and watching the starlight dance high above the rugged peaks of the island of Molokai and the warm breeze rustling the palm trees.

As I pulled a lawn chair onto the sand, a guy sitting on another chair turned to me and said in a quiet voice, “It doesn’t get much better than this.”

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